LAUNCHED.
Before I went to bed that night I wrote to Mr. Warrington, telling him I
had decided to accept Mr. Lovett’s offer; and before another fortnight
was over my head, I was on my way to St. Pucelle. There was no reason
for delay, and the few things I had to do, I hurried over as quickly as
possible. We had always lived in furnished rooms; one week’s notice was
sufficient to set me free from them. The books and articles that had
belonged especially to my mother found house-room with my kind friend
Mrs. Sandilands. The only possessions I carried away with me were her
Bible and her portrait and my own limited wardrobe. I wanted to begin
life anew, cumbered with as few reminders of the past as possible.
I did not think, though, that I should find parting with the grave in
Norwood Cemetery so hard. I had believed myself to be too philosophical
to care about leaving that, any more than the old books that Mrs.
Sandilands had taken charge of. But when the time came to say good-bye
to it, and that which lay in it, I found I was as stupid, commonplace
and non-reasoning an animal as ever wept above an inanimate object that
could neither see, hear, nor respond.
Mr. Warrington’s cruel arguments came back to my mind, and I found
myself wondering if the end of it all had really come, and I was tearing
myself away from the only link that could ever bind me to her again. It
was late in the evening, at the close of the last day I was to spend in
Norwood, that I stole into the cemetery and found my way, less by sight
than by instinct, to the heap of earth, as yet unsoftened by any grass,
that covered her. It must be allowed to sink—so the sexton had informed
me—before it could be decorated like the other graves.
To sink right down upon _her_—pressing, pressing, with its awful
unyielding weight, upon the lid of the coffin which covered that dear
dead face—dear, even in spite of its ghastly want of resemblance to that
which she had borne in life. I had said good-bye to the Sandilands and
all my friends in Norwood; this was to be the last farewell my lips
should utter there.
I sank down upon the mound of clay, and wrestled with my agony alone.
Where was she, this beloved mother of mine? Who could tell me, _without
any doubt_, of her habitation, her occupation, or her final destiny? Was
she really gone for ever, as Mr. Warrington would have assured me,
resolved, body and spirit, into the dust out of which she had been made,
and as effectually lost as the burnt-out candle, the particles of which
have mingled with the air? Was there no place of meeting beyond this
world where I should see and clasp her again? The parson would, of
course, have answered ‘yes;’ but the attainment of his conventional
paradise was saddled with so many conditions that I was hopeless of ever
reaching it. _She_ might have got there, with her angelic love and
tenderness for all things, whether in heaven or on earth, but I knew
myself to be unequal to following her footsteps. I sat on her grave
stunned and hopeless. We had often talked of a future world together,
and it had seemed easy to believe anything when her lips uttered it; but
now that she had left me, I wanted _proof_, certain and unanswerable
proof, of the truth of what I had been taught; and the foundation on
which I had built my apparent trust had all crumbled under my touchstone
like sand. I felt there was no proof, no certainty, only a vague hope
for ourselves, which became a broken reed when we tried to find comfort
in it under the loss of those we had loved. Every one had conjured me to
look forward to meeting her again. No one had given me one convincing
argument that I should do so. I was surrounded by the dark, impenetrable
mystery of death, and I got up from the grave and walked back to my
lodgings in a condition of dull, sodden despair.
I was to meet Mr. Warrington the next morning, at twelve o’clock, at one
of the large London wharves. He had been very anxious to accompany me to
St. Pucelle, and deliver me safely into Mr. Lovett’s charge, but I had
refused his kind offices. In the first place, I was quite able to travel
alone; in the second, I longed to find myself so. I had merely to cross
to Antwerp, and take the train on from there to St. Pucelle—or rather to
Artois, which was the nearest railway-station to it. I was sufficiently
acquainted with the French language not to have the slightest doubt of
being able to make my wants understood, and something struck me as very
ludicrous in the idea of a little dandy like Mr. Warrington conducting a
great, tall woman like myself across the water, and delivering me over
to Mr. Lovett’s care, as if I had been a child. So, after he had met me
at the wharf, looking as fresh and trim, with an exquisite button-hole
of white rosebuds and forget-me-nots, as if he were just about to take a
stroll in the Park, and secured a berth for me, and paid my fare, and
seen that my luggage was safely on board, I dismissed him with
ungrateful alacrity, and felt a sensation of relief as the steamboat
quietly glided down the river, and I saw him take off his hat to me for
at least the sixth time, before he quitted the landing-stage.
‘At last,’ I said to myself, with a long-drawn sigh, ‘I am free to
forget. Everything about me—even to the dress I wear—is a novelty. I
have positively nothing, except a piece of pasteboard and a book, that
belongs to the past. Thank God for it!’
I forgot the heart I carried in my bosom. For a while I diverted myself
by watching my fellow-passengers and trying to guess their histories.
There were only about a dozen of them, and they were all collected upon
deck. There was the conventional newly-married couple; I found them out
at once, principally because everything the bride had on was new, even
to the soles of her boots, which were almost as fresh as when they had
left the workman’s hands, and had evidently never trod the vulgar earth
before that morning.
There were a mother and father with a couple of odious children, whom
they permitted to run against the other passengers just as they chose,
smearing their dresses with their sticky fingers and staring rudely in
their faces for five minutes together. They kept leaping up on the seats
also, and leaning over the sides of the vessel, till I began to hope
that one or both might disappear for ever under the water. No such good
luck, however, was in store for us. To the end of the voyage the
children were ubiquitous. They scrambled for food at the dinner-table,
and long after they had been put to bed, reappeared in their
night-dresses to demand more fruit and biscuits.
If parents only would realise what an abominable nuisance their
offspring are to everybody but themselves, they would not, perhaps,
entail so many unnecessary invectives on their heads as they do. If
there is one character in history with whom I have more sympathy than
another, it certainly is Herod. My attention was diverted for a time
from these horrid imps by a young girl dressed, as I was, in deep
mourning, who sat by herself in a very subdued attitude at one end of
the vessel. I found she was going, for the first time, to a foreign
school at Ghent. She had lost her father, and was anxious to perfect
herself in French and German, before attempting to earn her own
livelihood as a governess. It was a melancholy prospect, I thought. I
imagined myself the governess of two such children as were annoying the
company now, whilst their mother complacently read a cheap novel, and
felt sure that in such a case I should have ended my career upon the
gallows. Had it been necessary for me to work for my bread, I would have
been a housemaid, a cook, shop-girl—anything rather than a governess or
a nurse!
Two or three foreigners, seedy and dirty in appearance, were standing
near me, and looking rather impertinently in my face, which gave me a
desire to change my seat. I rose, with the intention of crossing the
deck, when my hand-bag, which had been lying on my lap, fell to the
ground.
Some one quickly picked it up and restored it to me. Not one of my seedy
foreigners, but a bright-haired English lad of not more, I thought, than
sixteen or seventeen years old.
‘Do you wish to go downstairs?’ he inquired politely; ‘and may I help
you?’
It was such a nice, frank, boyish voice and face, that I quite took to
him.
‘No, thank you,’ I said; ‘I only wish to sit on the other side of the
boat.’
‘I will find you a seat. It is much cooler there,’ he answered, with
alacrity.
My boy-gallant then accompanied me across the deck, and having arranged
my plaid for me to sit down upon, ensconced himself by my side.
‘We shall have a charming passage across this time,’ he remarked,
confidentially.
‘Shall we? I know nothing of the tides. I have never crossed before.’
‘Do you go by Calais, then?’
‘No! This is the first time I have ever left England!’
He opened his round eyes to their utmost.
‘Oh! I say! Why, I cross six times every year, and sometimes oftener.’
‘Do you live abroad, then?’
‘No! I live in London—at least, my dad does—but I’m coaching for the
Civil Service, with old Felton, at Rille, and run home at Christmas and
Easter and Midsummer. I’m just going back after the summer vacation.
Isn’t it a bore?’
‘Dreadful!’ I acquiesced. ‘But is not Rille near Artois?’
‘About twenty miles distant. Why?’
‘Only that I am going to Artois, or near it.’
‘That’s jolly! I’ll look after you and see you get there all right, as
you’ve not been used to travelling—that is, if you’d like me to.’
‘Thank you, very much.’
I could not help inwardly smiling to think that I, who had so scornfully
rejected the escort of the polite and experienced Mr. Warrington, should
be thanking a raw schoolboy for the offer of his valuable protection to
Rille. But the cordial unconventionality of the lad pleased me, and I
thought I should like to have him for a travelling companion.
‘It is not much of a journey from Antwerp to Rille,’ I said.
‘Only a couple of hours. We shall get in about eight o’clock to-morrow
morning, and there’s a train at half-past which will land me at my shop
by half-past ten, and you at Artois at eleven. I pity you staying at
Artois; it’s a horrid dull place.’
‘Oh! I am not going to remain at Artois. My friends live a little
farther on.’
As he saw I did not volunteer the information, his intuitive delicacy
forbid his asking me the name of my friends, or of myself. But he
frankly disclosed his own.
‘My dad’s name is Sir John Stephenson. Dare say you’ve heard of him.
He’s a bigwig in the doctor way. He wanted me to be one. He said, “Fred,
my boy, there’s nothing like the medical profession.” But I didn’t see
it—I don’t fancy cutting off arms and legs—should you?’
‘No, indeed! And so your name is Frederick Stephenson?’
‘Yes! And I’ve got two brothers, Bob and Ernest; but they’re quite
little chaps.’
‘I suppose I must tell you my name in return, especially as we shall
travel to Rille together. I am called Hilda Marsh.’
‘That’s an awfully jolly name—Hilda, I mean. I’ve got three sisters, and
they have rather nice names, I think: Jessie and Amy and Blanche, but
“Hilda” beats them all to smash.’
‘I am glad you think so! Do you like living at Rille?’
‘Pretty well, but I shall be very glad when I’ve done with it. We have
larks now and then, but old Felton’s the clergyman there, and awfully
stiff with us. He hardly ever lets us go into the town.’
At this juncture the dinner-bell rang, and my young friend was all alert
to obey it.
‘Won’t you come down?’ he urged. ‘They give very good spreads on board
this boat, and if you’re likely to be ill when we get out to sea, you’ll
be all the worse for not having eaten anything.’
But I could not join them at the dinnertable. I had not sat down to a
regular meal for weeks, and the idea of roast and boiled joints sickened
me. I persuaded Master Fred Stephenson to leave me where I was, whilst
he satisfied the cravings of nature, to look at the charming sights
which presented themselves on either side the river, which we were now
fast leaving for the open sea.
By six o’clock we were well out in the ocean, which was calm as a lake
at that time of year; and I shrank with dismay at the idea of quitting
the cool sweet-smelling deck for the stuffy cabin, to which I had been
introduced in the former part of the day.
‘Why should you?’ exclaimed Master Fred, to whom I had confided my
grievance; ‘we’ll have a mattress and pillow sent up on deck for you,
and you’ll sleep twice as well here as you would below. I’ll go and
speak to the captain at once about it.’
He strode off with the air of a man, before I had time to dissuade him
from asking for what appeared to me an impossible indulgence. However,
his application was speedily followed by the appearance of a seaman
bearing the mattress, pillows, and blankets; and when I saw several
others of the passengers making themselves comfortable for the night in
the same manner, I grew less shy of using my improvised couch, and was
thankful to rest upon it.
As I lay there through the dark night, gazing up into the faces of the
moon and the stars, I could hardly believe that every throb of the
machinery was carrying me farther and farther away from the scenes with
which I had been associated so long. It was a lonely, peaceful
sensation, that of being borne along upon the lapping waves and through
the cool night air without any exertion, and only the burr of the
steamer’s wheels, and an occasional order from the captain to intimate
that some one was watching over my safety whether I slept or not. I lay
thus for some hours, thinking the one great thought that never left my
brain then, by night or day, until at last fatigue overcame me, and I
fell asleep. I woke with a sensation of being stifled. There was no
light, no air, nothing. What had happened to me? I struggled violently
for a moment, when some one, with a gay laugh, suddenly twitched a
blanket off my face, and I was free to breathe again.
‘Holloa! Miss Marsh,’ exclaimed Fred Stephenson, ‘did you think you were
buried alive?’
‘Something very like it,’ I replied; ‘what happened to me?’
‘Only this, that when the dew began to fall this morning, I drew the
blanket over your face. It isn’t safe to sleep in it, you know, and
every one is covered up in the same way.’
‘Well, it was very kind of you to think of it,’ I said, ‘but I certainly
thought we were all going to the bottom. How still the sea is!’
‘We’ve been out of the sea for the last four hours. We are going up the
Scheldt now, and shall be in Antwerp before you’ve had time to have your
breakfast and make a comfortable toilet.’
I scrambled to my feet at this intelligence, and sought the shelter of
my cabin, which felt closer and more stuffy even than it had done the
day before. A cup of coffee woke me completely up again, and by the time
the boat steamed alongside the quay at Antwerp, I was on deck, ready to
admire or be surprised at every fresh thing I saw. Master Fred
Stephenson proved an admirable cicerone, and never ceased to call my
attention to everything that he thought would interest or amuse me.
‘Aren’t those rum houses and trees?’ he said in his schoolboy language,
as he pointed out some quaint buildings on the quay; ‘they look for all
the world like the contents of one of those German boxes of toys the
children get at home, set up on end. And that’s a milk-cart drawn by
that dog, with all those brass cans in it. Did you ever see such caps
and bonnets as the women wear. I tried to squash one of their bonnets
once by sitting on it, but it was no use. They’re as hard as wood.
Holloa! here come the Custom-house people to look at the boxes. If you
will let me have your keys, Miss Marsh, I’ll see your luggage passed. I
suppose you’ve got nothing to declare.’
I assured him I had not.
‘Well, I’ve got lots, but I’m blessed if they shall find them. I smuggle
more things, every time I cross, than the rest of the English pupils put
together; but I’m an awfully lucky fellow, and have never been caught
yet.’
I stood on the bridge to watch the Custom-house officers at their duty,
and found it a very amusing sight. The distinction they made between
searching the luggage of their own countrymen and that of mine, inspired
me with a feeling of pride that, notwithstanding Master Fred’s
peccadilloes, the word of an Englishman should be so readily taken.
I observed that when the bridegroom and the father of the obnoxious
children had simply said they had nothing in their boxes liable to duty,
the keys were returned to them after the merest feint had been made of
raising the lids. But no such declarations availed the seedy foreigners,
though they accompanied them with oaths. Their scanty apparel, very
yellow and shabby in appearance, was religiously displayed on deck for
the admiration of the rest of the passengers, and every crevice of their
trunks carefully searched; and I felt sincere pity for one poor wretch
who was compelled to turn out the whole contents of an enormous hamper,
which was found, after all, to contain nothing but apples and pears.
When it came to the turn for Master Fred’s boxes, he threw his keys to
the Custom-house officers in the most nonchalant manner, desiring him to
search for himself.
The consequence of which was that, the trouble promising to prove too
great, the keys were merely turned in the locks and delivered again to
their owner.
‘That’s the way I do them, Miss Marsh,’ said Master Fred, with the
greatest glee, as we drove together to the station. ‘There’s nothing
goes down in this world like a perfect absence of fear. If you try to
prevent those fellows from rumpling your collars, they turn everything
over in order to find your contraband goods; but if you tell them to
look for themselves and not bother you, they feel sure directly that
innocence alone can make you so brave.’
‘You are a very naughty boy,’ I said, smiling in spite of myself at his
self-assurance and British cheek.
[Illustration]